There isn’t only one notion of utility—utility in decision theory is different to utility in ethics. Utility in decision theory can indeed be derived from choices over lotteries and is incomparable between individuals (without further assumptions) and is equivalent under positive affine transformation because it’s just representing choices.
Utility in moral philosophy refers to value and typically refers to the value of experiences (as opposed to other conceptions of the good like satisfaction of preferences), is comparable between individuals without further assumptions and isn’t equivalent under positive affine transformation.
An individual’s utility (on either of the definitions) may or may not be changed by the political process.
Consider a new far-right party entering the political sphere. They successfully changed political conversations to be more anti-immigration and have lots of focus on immigrant men committing sexual violence.
A voter exposed to these new political conversations has their choice behaviour changed because they now feel more angry towards immigrants and want to hurt them, rather than because they think that more restrictive immigration policies would make them personally safer, for instance.
This same voter also has utility—in the moral philosophy sense—changed by the new political conversation. Now they feel sadistic pleasure when they hear about immigrants being deported on the news, leading to better subjective experiences when they see immigrants being deported.
I strongly reject the claim that we should imagine voters as exclusively deciding how to vote in terms of the personal benefits they derive in expectation from policies. I think people support capital punishment mostly because it fits with their inbuilt sense of justice rather than because they think it benefits them.
We could (probably) represent this voter as being an expected utility maximiser where they have positive utility from capital punishment, in the decision theory sense. This is a different claim from the claim that a voter expects their subjective experiences to be more positively valenced when there’s capital punishment.
I’m afraid I can’t comment on what ignorance factors do or do not account for under Bayesian regret without rereading the paper, but it’s of course possible that they do account for that disparity between actual and assumed preferences.
There isn’t only one notion of utility—utility in decision theory is different to utility in ethics. Utility in decision theory can indeed be derived from choices over lotteries and is incomparable between individuals (without further assumptions) and is equivalent under positive affine transformation because it’s just representing choices.
Utility in moral philosophy refers to value and typically refers to the value of experiences (as opposed to other conceptions of the good like satisfaction of preferences), is comparable between individuals without further assumptions and isn’t equivalent under positive affine transformation.
An individual’s utility (on either of the definitions) may or may not be changed by the political process.
Consider a new far-right party entering the political sphere. They successfully changed political conversations to be more anti-immigration and have lots of focus on immigrant men committing sexual violence.
A voter exposed to these new political conversations has their choice behaviour changed because they now feel more angry towards immigrants and want to hurt them, rather than because they think that more restrictive immigration policies would make them personally safer, for instance.
This same voter also has utility—in the moral philosophy sense—changed by the new political conversation. Now they feel sadistic pleasure when they hear about immigrants being deported on the news, leading to better subjective experiences when they see immigrants being deported.
I strongly reject the claim that we should imagine voters as exclusively deciding how to vote in terms of the personal benefits they derive in expectation from policies. I think people support capital punishment mostly because it fits with their inbuilt sense of justice rather than because they think it benefits them.
We could (probably) represent this voter as being an expected utility maximiser where they have positive utility from capital punishment, in the decision theory sense. This is a different claim from the claim that a voter expects their subjective experiences to be more positively valenced when there’s capital punishment.
I’m afraid I can’t comment on what ignorance factors do or do not account for under Bayesian regret without rereading the paper, but it’s of course possible that they do account for that disparity between actual and assumed preferences.